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Jim Ratcliffe Net Worth How did He make his money?

Jim Ratcliffe Net Worth

Jim Ratcliffe Net Worth

James Ratcliffe, born in Britain, studied chemical engineering before switching careers to become a wealthy banker and businessman. Ineos Group, has been led by James Ratcliffe, a former engineer, as its chair since 1998. He has been reduced to his previous role as CEO since the company’s expansion through mergers and partnerships.

Ratcliffe, who is one of the wealthiest persons in the United Kingdom today, chooses to remain anonymous. He was born in Manchester on October 18th, 1952, and attended the University of Birmingham to earn a degree in chemical engineering. After getting his first job with oil major Esso, Ratcliffe chose to branch out into finance by getting an MBA and studying management accounting at London Business School.

A while later, he helped establish INSPEC, which first rented the former BP Chemicals building in Antwerp, Belgium. However, Ratcliffe established Ineos in Hampshire in 1998 in order to acquire the freehold of the Antwerp site and INSPEC. Since then, Ineos has undertaken a number of strategic acquisitions, including the European chlor-vinyls business of Belgium’s Tessenderlo for $110 million

and a joint venture with Germany’s BASF. The purchase of BP Group’s Innovene business for $8.7 billion in 2005 is seen as the company’s greatest success. This has allowed it to become a major player in the global styrene monomer and polystyrene markets. The majority of Ratcliffe’s wealth comes from the company he still owns 66.67% of.

Jim Ratcliffe Net Worth

Jim Ratcliffe Early life and education

Ratcliffe was born in a council house in Failsworth, Greater Manchester to a joiner father and an accounts office worker mother. He stayed there until he was ten years old. By the time he was an adult, his dad was running a manufacturing that produced equipment for laboratories. Ratcliffe came to East Yorkshire with his family when he was 10 years old. He stayed in Hull until he turned 18 and attended Beverley Grammar School. In 1974, Ratcliffe received his degree from the University of Birmingham.

Jim Ratcliffe Career

He started his career with oil major Esso but then opted to diversify into finance by earning an MSc in finance from London Business School between 1978 and 1980 (he later gave £25 million to the institution in 2016). After graduating from Harvard Business School in 1989, he went to work for Advent International, a private equity firm in the United States. 

Jim Ratcliffe Environmental pollution

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Ineos threatened in March 2019 to shut down its Middlesbrough manufacturing factory unless it is granted a “defer compliance” extension from European Union regulations meant to reduce pollution in the air and water. The EA data also shows that between 2014 and 2017, the facility accrued 176 permit breaches. “Air emissions are well over permissible limits and this poses a risk to the environment,” the EA stated in a statement.

Tom Crotty, director of INEOS, has stated that the company “cannot justify” the investment needed to comply with upcoming EU air and water pollution laws. The high quantities of hydrogen cyanide in the syngas have hampered Ineos’s small-scale bio ethanol manufacturing initiatives employing Clostridium bacteria. In 2017,  Ineos sold its Florida factory to Alliance Bio-Products Inc.

Jim Ratcliffe Personal life

Ratcliffe wed Amanda Townson in 1985; the couple had two boys, George and Samuel. The couple split up in 1995.He has a daughter with Italian tax attorney Maria Alessia Maresca, from a prior relationship. Catherine Polli is his current girlfriend. Ratcliffe divides his time between the principality of Monaco and the English county of Hampshire.

In May of 2017, he presented his fifth plan, which was less ambitious than the previous four, to replace a two-bedroom house with a four-bedroom “luxury mansion” on Thorns Beach, near Beaulieu, on the Hampshire coast. It is projected that Ratcliffe’s transfer to Monaco from Hampshire in September 2020 will save him £4 billion in taxes.

In the Swiss town of Gland, just adjacent to Michael Schumacher’s, he has a lavish home right on the beach of Lake Geneva. His home is a part of the Napoleon Bonaparte Imperial estate, which is also home to Alix Napoléon, the last of the French royal family.  Ratcliffe has travelled to both the North and South Poles on excursions, and he also rode a motorcycle across South Africa for three months.

In 2013, he ran across the Sahara Desert in the Marathon Des Sables, and he has since launched the nonprofit organisation “Go Run for Fun,” which has inspired thousands of kids between the ages of five and ten to become more physically active by hosting celebrity-driven events. “As a corporation, Ineos backed the common market, but not a United States of Europe,” Ratcliffe, a euroskeptic, has said.

The “layers and layers” of European law, which he believes are making European economies more burdensome and inefficient, have drawn his ire. He has made it clear that he does not have much respect for politicians, saying things like “lunch around with bankers” and “politicians are less ready to talk economic matters with industrialists and business people than they are with bankers.” 

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